So, we're watching Some Like It Hot and Tony Curtis has his eye on Marilyn Monroe. How's he going to woo her? Easy: he jumps into a blazer and starts emphasising random words in his sentences. In other words, he starts channelling Cary Grant.
Cary Grant was one of cinema's greatest thoroughbreds, the ultimate Prince Charming: impossibly handsome, and debonair in ways that suggested he'd been reared in Monte Carlo or Palm Beach rather than the more prosaic Bristol.
He was also one of the medium's greatest performers, making it look so effortless that he seldom got the recognition he deserved. Other actors had class and poise but lacked his perfect timing and informal grace. They lacked his instincts too: while he could have made a tidy living on production-line romantic comedies, he sought out interesting scripts and single-minded directors.
Has any major star been so willing to suffer humiliation? He happily played whipping boy for Howard Hawks: in Bringing Up Baby, Grant undergoes the torments of the damned. It's one of the great comic performances and free from any vanity.
He formed another useful partnership with Hitchcock, who also encouraged him to play with his image. His characters in both Suspicion and Notorious are as charming as only Cary Grant can be but also duplicitous and dangerous. His persona was surprisingly flexible and he tested it across a great many genres: action (Gunga Din), thrillers (Charade), romance (Indiscreet) and comedy (My Favorite Wife).
His most personal film was None But The Lonely Heart but audiences reacted with less enthusiasm than critics. Cary Grant as an impoverished cockney? No thanks. Yet rejection hurt; the film reflected his own underprivileged upbringing, far away from the tinsel.
But Cary Grant's greatest role was as ‘Cary Grant’, a persona shaped on the Hollywood soundstages by one-time acrobat Archibald Leech, who flew through his roles with the greatest of ease. The films in this collection show just what an actor, a performer, a presence Cary Grant really was and what a credit he is to the fine city of Bristol.
21 films starring one of the great leading men of film, the handsome, witty, charming and debonair Cary Grant. Comprises: That Touch Of Mink (1962); The Grass Is Greener (1960); Indiscreet (1958); Father Goose (1964); Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948); Bringing Up Baby (1938); None But The Lonely Heart (1944); Mr Lucky (1943); Once Upon A Honeymoon (1942); In Name Only (1939); Gunga Din (1939); The Toast Of New York (1937); Sylvia Scarlett (1935); Charade (1963); I'm No Angel (1939); She Done Him Wrong (1933); Blonde Venus (1932); Operation Petticoat (1959); My Favourite Wife (1940); The Last Outpost (1935); Suspicion (1941).
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Cary Grant (21 Disc Box Set)
